Spaces Of Belonging
by tielan
Summary: John returns to Atlantis in the wake of his father's death, and considers what home really means to him. John gen.


**NOTES**: written for the John-and-Teyla Thing-A-Thon.

**Spaces Of Belonging**

He feels it the instant he walks into the gateroom from the midway station - the city's welcome thrumming in his blood.

_Welcome home, John._

An altimeter spins around, stabilising, settling, the numbers no longer falling. John's out of freefall and into a controlled climb again. He's lost altitude, but he's still here. Warm sunlight pours through the bright stain of the window to cast gold-green shadows across the floor. It bathes him in homecoming warmth as he climbs the stairs to the control room.

A lump forms in his throat as he reaches the top of the stairs, far more painful than the shock he felt when Sam told him of his father's death. Atlantis is home, more so than the picturesque ranch sitting white amidst the verdant forest.

Dave is welcome to the family home; John has a home of his own.

Sam is waiting for him on the balcony when he comes up. "Colonel Sheppard."

"Colonel Carter."

"How was it?"

"It was a funeral. You know, the usual."

"My condolences on your loss."

"Thanks."

The formalities suffice them both. He's read her file; she knows what it's like to lose an imposing, dominant father. The difference between them is that Carter reconciled to her father - gave him a new lease of life, regained those last few years of parental connection before her father's death.

There'll be no reconciliation between Patrick Sheppard and his dissident son.

It doesn't quite hurt. John's feeling restless, unsettled. He's in a controlled climb, but what took him down is still out there; it could come at him again.

He takes a light tone of inquiry."Anything dreadful happen while I was away?"

"Nothing." Then her face takes on the slightly uncomfortable expression that develops when she's rethinking her words, trying to be absolutely correct. "But we _did_ get news from the IOA."

"I thought you said nothing dreadful happened."

Her smile flashes out briefly. "They want to run interviews with Teyla and Ronon sometime in the next couple of weeks. 'At our convenience' is what the message said."

"And if it's never convenient?"

"We might keep that as an option. I don't think Teyla will have a problem dealing with them..."

"She won't," John says with certainty.

"Right. Ronon, on the other hand..."

They grimace in synchronisation at the thought of letting Ronon loose in a room full of IOA representatives. "I'll speak to him," John promises.

"That would be good. I have another idea on how we can ease him in, but I'll have to wait on someone else's call. If you could mention it to Teyla, too?"

He's intrigued by her other idea, but he doesn't push it now. The mention of Teyla has his mind on other tracks. "No trouble with Teyla? I mean, with her pregnancy?"

Sam heads for her office. "Not that Keller's mentioned. It's good to have you back, John."

It's good to _be_ back.

He dumps his duffle in his room, and then goes looking for Teyla. He knows where Rodney will be found, he can guess where Ronon will be found, but he doesn't want either of them right now. He wants someone with whom he can be silent, without words, without challenge - no questions asked, no demands made.

John wants to see Teyla.

He goes past her quarters, but the chime that rings out at the swipe of his hand indicates there's no-one in. He wanders out to the rec rooms, wondering if she's sitting there with a dozen other women exchanging stories about their pregnancies and births and children, but while there are other people playing pool, watching TV, and conversing, Teyla's not one of them. He checks in the infirmary, in case something happened and there was no time to tell Sam.

No sign of her in any of the beds, and when he gets to Jenn Keller's office, she greets him with a, "My condolences, Colonel."

"Um, yeah, thanks." John's not sure what to do with the sympathy, so he changes the channel. "Hey, do you know where Teyla is?"

Jenn checks her watch. "Hm. At this hour? She might be meditating. Check the secondary gym rooms."

Unlike the primary gym rooms, filled with equipment, mats, and marines, the secondary gym rooms are quiet and spartan. John knows Teyla goes there to stretch and meditate. He hasn't joined her in either since he found out about her pregnancy.

The pregnancy changed things.

Just not this.

A palpable calm surrounds her where she sits in the far corner, cross-legged in the window seat, looking out at the sea and the sky and the light that's fading from the eastern sky, drawn to the west in preparation for sunset. The late afternoon's light casts shadows over her belly, over her breasts, her shoulders, her throat, her face. John can see she's tired, darker shadows under her eyes, and the way she holds herself, not slumping but not alert either, like a pilot just returned from a mission.

He knows how that feels at this moment.

A soft tap on the wall makes her aware of his presence. Light slides briefly across her features as she turns from the window to look directly at him, standing in the doorway. There's a calm in her eyes as she speaks.

"John. I'm sorry I did not come to see you before you left."

"There wasn't much time," he says, unbothered. He'd wondered about that at first - until Ronon had reminded him of Teyla's appointment. "How'd the ultrasound go?"

"I mailed them to you. We can look at them later." Her smile quivers in the half-light, then fades. "Did you see your family?"

"My brother." He comes into the room, feeling stupid standing by the door and talking to her across the distance. "We talked."

"You were not close."

He shrugs as he leans his shoulder against the window embrasure. "Hard to be close to someone I haven't seen in five years. But we talked. That counts as close for people like us."

She nods, watching him, listening, as other people don't. And, because she listens, he talks.

"He thought I was there for the money." It's hard not to feel bitter about that. "I haven't asked for money since I was in school and he thinks I'm there to claim my share of the inheritance. I didn't even know my Dad had left me anything."

God knows what he's going to do with a twenty percent interest in the business - especially when he's halfway across the galaxy most of the time. Hell, even Nancy would have a better idea of what to do with the shares. John left them in Dave's hands, with instructions for payouts to be made to various people and organisations if he should die in the line of duty.

"Perhaps a conciliatory gesture?"

He snorts. "From my dad?"

"When someone you love dies, there are always regrets." Teyla stares into shadows, her eyes shuttering with old memories. "Perhaps he regretted your division."

"I doubt it." It goes against the grain to think of the old man regretting anything - to think that, maybe, just once, the adult John Sheppard might have met his father without recriminations. Although, come to think of it, that was just as unlikely as Patrick Sheppard wanting to reunite with his son.

"John, why did you go?" Her question catches him by surprise. There's no accusation in it, no demand to know - merely an inquiry, slightly thoughtful. It's still confronting.

"What?"

"Why did you go? You have not spoken to your family in years." Teyla's hand lingers on the blatant curve of her stomach, over the son she's carrying; probably thinking of her own family - her own people - vanished without a trace. "When we faced annihilation during the Wraith siege, you did not send a message to them."

"I..." There are things rising within him - thoughts he can't express, emotions he won't admit.

It's complicated.

When Teyla mentions her father, there's love there - affection and amusement, regret and remembrance, a child's longing for what used to be. John doesn't think of his father that way. He almost wishes he could, except that the idea of Patrick Sheppard as a caring parent to his oldest son is laughable.

Still, for all that John's a military man, trained to face the uncomfortable truths of life, he knows that there's a boy inside him that longs to be accepted and acceptable to his father. To just be 'John', not 'John Sheppard, my son and heir' or 'John Sheppard, ungrateful son'. The labels are always there when thinking of his father - even if they were never said out loud, they were felt.

He settles for saying, "It's difficult, Teyla."

"Easier to hunt the Replicators?"

"Yes." Ronon would have told her about it, and for a moment, he's tempted to take the conversation that way. Walk away from his father and brother, leave them behind in his thoughts as he left them behind on Earth - as they left him behind.

He could. It would be comfortable and familiar territory - don't acknowledge it, just walk away.

The restlessness in John manifests in a different kind of recklessness. And this is Teyla. If he can't say this to her, who can he say it to?

"At least it was just Dave and not my Dad," he says after a moment. "He's younger by a couple years, so I have the age advantage." Not that it did much good this time. It's been years since John argued with his brother - at least seven - and in that time a lot of things changed.

Not least of which is that Patrick Sheppard died without ever speaking to his estranged son.

"Is he much like you?"

John shrugs, considering the question. "Not really. He took after dad, I took after mom."

"Ronon said he runs your family's company."

"Companies, plural." The slight furrow of her forehead begs an explanation. "It's all under one group heading - Boron Energies, but there are smaller companies beneath them... Like the Smythe are one people but different clans."

"So the different companies have different purposes?"

"Sort of." It's not exact, but that's as close as they're going to get without explaining modern economic theory. "I don't know too much about it. Never wanted to go into the business."

He remembers the fights over that - his mom so recently dead and his father irrational and unwilling to listen to his oldest son's dreams. It still cramps his chest now, over twenty years later - the old anger he thought he'd buried when he finally realised his father would never approve his career.

John doesn't realise his hands are in fists until a hand touches his wrist.

He pulls back from Teyla, surprised at the contact, uncomfortable. Then he realises what he's implied and wishes he hadn't.

But Teyla looks up at him, calm in the evening quiet, a steady point of reference in the sudden absence of another certainty John has held to these last twenty years: the lingering taint of Patrick Sheppard's resentment towards his son for bucking the traces.

"I cannot say I am unhappy that you never went into business with your family," she says, and amusement dances on the curve of her mouth.

Her wry humour makes a lump in his throat, and the burning in his chest eases, the ache in his ribs subsiding. When it comes, John's smile is genuine, even if it feels a little wrung. "You know, I can't say I'm sorry either."

She sits back down in the window seat. "Will you go back to visit your family again?"

He sits down beside her, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, relieved. He gained a measure of resolution with Dave - the completion of his mission, then the long flight back to base. But this is grounding, reassurance, a point of reference he knows and is sure of - Atlantis, his team-mates, and Teyla.

John needed this.

"Yeah, probably sometime." And then, because it needs to be said and he needs to say it, John adds, "They're not my family, you know."

Teyla looks up at him and her eyes twinkle in the darkness. One hand closes lightly over his for a moment, soft heat gripping the chill of his skin, banishing the solitude John made for himself long ago.

"I know."

"_Home is not where you live, but where they understand you_."

Christian Morganstern


End file.
